I'm not usually a fan of the police & their increasingly militaristic tactics however in this case they showed commendable restraint. You have a maniac who's been pepper sprayed six times & is still running through the crowds swinging the knife at people & ignoring repeated demands to drop the knife & stop. Shooting him was really the only option by that point. They shot him center of mass to stop the threat, that the threat was stopped on a permanent basis was just an unfortunate/fortunate end result.

/although I do question/wonder why no (or little) mention of a taser was made. You'd think that in TS at the very least the cops would have them. Shooting drunk & obnoxious tourists would make for bad press

Recoil Therapy:/although I do question/wonder why no (or little) mention of a taser was made. You'd think that in TS at the very least the cops would have them. Shooting drunk & obnoxious tourists would make for bad press

They used up all the batteries tasing old ladies who didn't respect their authoritah.

legendary:Don't know why it takes an uncountable number of shots to take down one guy but otherwise I'd say the NYPD did a great job here to avoid any fatalities.

If I understand it correctly, police are trained to bring their target down. Don't point your gun at anything you don't intend to kill, and all that. Since you can't know ahead of time how many shots it will take to do that (on account of things like missing, flesh wounds, someone chemically influenced to have a lower response to pain, etc.) cops fire until the suspect is down.

But I'm not a cop, nor do I play one on TV, and I didn't stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night, so I could be wrong.

Hey, you know how everytime somebody goes on a killing spree with guns (e.g. a la Colorado batman movie), and then rational people start saying "hey maybe we should ban guns", and then gun-toting NRA nuts are always like "well, why don't you ban knives too, cuz those can kill people..."

Here's a guy who went on a rampage with a knife... aaaaaannndd how many people did he kill before police took him down?

I have no problems with the guy getting shot. Deadly force was appropriate.

I do wonder though, are police officers actually trained to empty their weapon once they decide to open fire or are they all just twitchy sons of biatches? I suppose conserving ammo isn't all that important when you're faced with a single adversary but I was always taught spastically yanking on a trigger shows a general lack of discipline.

Kome:legendary: Don't know why it takes an uncountable number of shots to take down one guy but otherwise I'd say the NYPD did a great job here to avoid any fatalities.

If I understand it correctly, police are trained to bring their target down. Don't point your gun at anything you don't intend to kill, and all that. Since you can't know ahead of time how many shots it will take to do that (on account of things like missing, flesh wounds, someone chemically influenced to have a lower response to pain, etc.) cops fire until the suspect is down.

But I'm not a cop, nor do I play one on TV, and I didn't stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night, so I could be wrong.

I admit I had not thought about that.

I realize you weren't replying to me but it sort of answers my question.

Kome:legendary: Don't know why it takes an uncountable number of shots to take down one guy but otherwise I'd say the NYPD did a great job here to avoid any fatalities.

If I understand it correctly, police are trained to bring their target down. Don't point your gun at anything you don't intend to kill, and all that. Since you can't know ahead of time how many shots it will take to do that (on account of things like missing, flesh wounds, someone chemically influenced to have a lower response to pain, etc.) cops fire until the suspect is down.

But I'm not a cop, nor do I play one on TV, and I didn't stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night, so I could be wrong.

Could be, and I wonder if the "marijuana" wasn't actually another substance or laced with something else.

I do wonder though, are police officers actually trained to empty their weapon once they decide to open fire or are they all just twitchy sons of biatches? I suppose conserving ammo isn't all that important when you're faced with a single adversary but I was always taught spastically yanking on a trigger shows a general lack of discipline.

Generally speaking, but adrenaline does crazy things to people sometimes.

legendary:Don't know why it takes an uncountable number of shots to take down one guy but otherwise I'd say the NYPD did a great job here to avoid any fatalities.

According to one of the comments, one video shows/counted 9 shot between two policemen. 4-5 shots each isn't all that unreasonable when their pistols hold 15+.

The police (& anyone who knows what they're doing) never shoot to wound, shoot to kill, or any other 'shoot to __' that you hear. The most common standard is that you shoot to stop the threat & once the threat is stopped then you stop shooting. Pretty much everyone is taught to shoot for the largest target possible which in a human is the chest area. The chest area also has most of the body's vital organs so the chances that getting shot there will stop you permanently is certainly there. Most training that I've seen/heard of advocates two quick shots to center of mass, reevaluate the threat & if he hasn't stopped/gone down do it again. This can all happen within a matter of 2-3 seconds. Two policemen shooting 9 shots makes me think that this is exactly how it went down. With all the cameras recording these days, if it's dramatically different we'll hear about it over the next few days.

Without seeing the video & assuming that the 9 shot count is accurate, it sounds like everything went according to training & at the time of the shooting all other options had been expended (taser question notwithstanding). Some police are trigger happy morons but these two seem to be well trained/under restraint.

Out-of-towners on a red double-decker tourist bus gawked at the unfolding drama, a bit more of the New York experience than they had bargained for. Nervous onlookers peered out from restaurant and shop windows, the flashing lights of Times Square lending a bizarre atmosphere, which grew even wilder as a crowd gathered, attracted by the commotion. And that's how it goes up in NYC fo' y'all!

Recoil Therapy:There needs to be a d) all of the above for both questions....

I'm not usually a fan of the police & their increasingly militaristic tactics however in this case they showed commendable restraint. You have a maniac who's been pepper sprayed six times & is still running through the crowds swinging the knife at people & ignoring repeated demands to drop the knife & stop. Shooting him was really the only option by that point. They shot him center of mass to stop the threat, that the threat was stopped on a permanent basis was just an unfortunate/fortunate end result.

/although I do question/wonder why no (or little) mention of a taser was made. You'd think that in TS at the very least the cops would have them. Shooting drunk & obnoxious tourists would make for bad press

Some years ago in Des Moines, police responded to a call of a guy in the street with a huge butcher knife, threatening people. Repeated demands that he put the knife down were ignored and then the guy charged one officer, knocked him down and proceeded to stab him multiple times in the chest. The officer drew his gun and shot him dead right there, while the guy was stabbing him.

It later turned out that the guy was schizo and off his meds. The day or so after, the guy's mother was on the news wailing about how they didn't have to shoot him, he was a good boy, all the usual crap. I'm sorry, but the cop did the right thing. His vest saved him from serious injury but wasn't going to save him much longer. Blowing the crazy guy away did.

Recoil Therapy:There needs to be a d) all of the above for both questions....

I'm not usually a fan of the police & their increasingly militaristic tactics however in this case they showed commendable restraint. You have a maniac who's been pepper sprayed six times & is still running through the crowds swinging the knife at people & ignoring repeated demands to drop the knife & stop. Shooting him was really the only option by that point. They shot him center of mass to stop the threat, that the threat was stopped on a permanent basis was just an unfortunate/fortunate end result.

/although I do question/wonder why no (or little) mention of a taser was made. You'd think that in TS at the very least the cops would have them. Shooting drunk & obnoxious tourists would make for bad press

If they have pepper spray on their belt, they are prohibited from carrying a taser. Too much of a risk of explosion.

Mangoose:PC LOAD LETTER: Not seeing (c) and I am not reading all the comments to find what I assume is ONE comment.

Plus, the dude was smoking weed. Kinda hard to compete with that for trying to calm someone down.

While I am no anti-pot advocate, there are plenty of people for whom smoking marijuana is dysphoric. It can cause agitation, paranoia and others along that spectrum.

To summarize: Pot should be legal. But there are plenty of people who shouldn't smoke it.

OMG. Marijuana is the Pax!

"The G-23 Paxilon Hydrochlorate that we added to the air processors. It was supposed to calm the population, weed out aggression. Well, it works. The people here stopped fighting. And then they stopped everything else. They stopped going to work, they stopped breeding, talking, eating. There's 30 million people here, and they all just let themselves die. About a tenth of a percent of the population had the opposite reaction to the Pax. Their aggressor response increased beyond madness. They have become... well they've killed most of us... and not just killed they've done things..."

cassanovascotian:Hey, you know how everytime somebody goes on a killing spree with guns (e.g. a la Colorado batman movie), and then rational people start saying "hey maybe we should ban guns", and then gun-toting NRA nuts are always like "well, why don't you ban knives too, cuz those can kill people..."

Here's a guy who went on a rampage with a knife... aaaaaannndd how many people did he kill before police took him down?

This wasn't a knife rampage, this was suicide by cop.Didn't he know NYC is a smoke free zone? And he just happened to have a blue headband and kitchen knife in his pocket?Some people will do anything to get on Fark...

cassanovascotian:Hey, you know how everytime somebody goes on a killing spree with guns (e.g. a la Colorado batman movie), and then rational people start saying "hey maybe we should ban guns", and then gun-toting NRA nuts are always like "well, why don't you ban knives too, cuz those can kill people..."

Here's a guy who went on a rampage with a knife... aaaaaannndd how many people did he kill before police took him down?

Many times the police apprehend (shoot or arrest) a person wielding a firearm before that person shoots anybody. But lets cheery pick one incident from both sides to make your argument.

You also fail by linking a killing spree (your own words) to a guy with a knife.

Dialectic:Out-of-towners on a red double-decker tourist bus gawked at the unfolding drama, a bit more of the New York experience than they had bargained for. Nervous onlookers peered out from restaurant and shop windows, the flashing lights of Times Square lending a bizarre atmosphere, which grew even wilder as a crowd gathered, attracted by the commotion. And that's how it goes up in NYC fo' y'all!

Me and my HS friends used to "mug" each other in front of tour busses in Times Square all the time. It worked pretty well back In the days when it really was dangerous to go there. We wanted the tourists to feel they were getting the full NY experience. Good times

cassanovascotian:Hey, you know how everytime somebody goes on a killing spree with guns (e.g. a la Colorado batman movie), and then rational people start saying "hey maybe we should ban guns", and then gun-toting NRA nuts are always like "well, why don't you ban knives too, cuz those can kill people..."

Here's a guy who went on a rampage with a knife... aaaaaannndd how many people did he kill before police took him down?

We should also ban foreign hippies before they kill any American brain cells.

After watching the video and counting 8-9 shots I think it's safe to say that perhaps it was a little overkill shooting that many bullets, but then again when has the NYPD ever shown restraint. These cops do their job and for the most part whenever there are dangerous weapons involved they shoot first and ask questions later.

Don't know the suspect's medical history but from the looks of things that situation could have gone a myriad of ways, but they way I look at it the cops probably killed him because they feared a possible hostage situation.

I generally try not to comment in police threads because I always get hit with "you're a pig- fark you"-style comments but if I may re: this incident-

Yes, we are trained to kill what we aim at. If you remove your weapon from its holster, aim it at another human being and actually place your index finger inside the trigger guard, things have generally gotten to a state of total FUBAR. The type of incident can vary greatly and yes, our reactions can also vary somewhat, but 9 times out of 10, the officer feels that there is no other option at that point.There are exceptions, but 99.9% of us want shooting someone to the the LAST resort. The psychological impact must be devestating.The opinion that we're all trigger-happy sociopaths just waiting for that golden moment to shoot someone is total uninformed horseshiat.

I hate to say this, and it's awful when something like this happens - but if I am somewhere, and have a gun for some reason, and some crazy guy starts menacing me and others with a knife, I'm likely to try to get him to drop it - and pretty likely to shoot if he doesn't. And I'm not a cop - just a guy.

jayphat:Recoil Therapy: There needs to be a d) all of the above for both questions....

I'm not usually a fan of the police & their increasingly militaristic tactics however in this case they showed commendable restraint. You have a maniac who's been pepper sprayed six times & is still running through the crowds swinging the knife at people & ignoring repeated demands to drop the knife & stop. Shooting him was really the only option by that point. They shot him center of mass to stop the threat, that the threat was stopped on a permanent basis was just an unfortunate/fortunate end result.

/although I do question/wonder why no (or little) mention of a taser was made. You'd think that in TS at the very least the cops would have them. Shooting drunk & obnoxious tourists would make for bad press

If they have pepper spray on their belt, they are prohibited from carrying a taser. Too much of a risk of explosion.